Kyle Schwarber Batting Leadoff Crucial To Phillies Success

PHILADELPHIA, PA — As the defending National League champion Phillies have once again roared back from an early season slump to hold the third best record in the league, the legions of doubters have, of course, emerged. Because this is Philadelphia, and if Jalen Hurts throws an interception during the season opener, there will be someone out there in the ether calling for Gardner Minshew or Koy Detmer to save the day.

Since June 2, when manager Rob Thomson more or less permanently re-enshrined Kyle Schwarber as the Phillies leadoff hitter, the team is 41-24. That's also the second best record in all of baseball, trailing only the Atlanta Braves.

In that 64-game span, Schwarber has a .330 on base percentage with 17 home runs.

But because on the surface Schwarber is not a traditional leadoff hitter, because he is an extreme three true outcomes hitter (walk, home run, strikeout) and draws some of the negative press that comes with such visible successes and failures, calls to remove him from leadoff have persisted.

"Enough already with a .180 leadoff guy," one Philly sportswriter said, as if Thomson were just experimenting all along. As if Thomson, with decades of baseball acumen and experience, a National League pennant under his belt, and the resources of a billion dollar franchise at his back, hadn't thought this one through.

And it's true, Schwarber's average for the season does sit at .180. But there's a lot to unpack there. To start with, Schwarber has been far better than .180, according to advanced metrics: his batting average on balls in play, which is essentially a measure of how lucky or unlucky a hitter is, sits at .193. That is extraordinarily unlucky, as the league average is .296. That means that if Schwarber were even half as lucky as the average hitter, then he'd be hitting about .230.

Dig farther into those metrics, and Schwarber's 46.5 percent hard-hit rate, and 91.5 mile per hour average exit velocity, are both towering above league averages (38.7 and 88.4, respectively), and in line with his career numbers. That means that regardless of what luck has played out on the stat sheet this year so far, Schwarber remains one of the most powerful hitters in the major leagues. You want your powerful hitters to get more at bats, and no one hits more than the leadoff hitter.

But all of that sort of misses the point, as do all sportswriter and WIP caller and talking head arguments that cite Schwarber's batting average, speed, or general profile. Because a leadoff hitter is about more than just getting on base. As any good baseball manager knows, it's also about setting the tempo for the rest of the lineup, for the rest of the game. When Schwarber hits a home run on one of the first pitches of the game, it's an instant spark to the lineup. It's a drag on the pitcher. It tells the two hole hitter, Alec Bohm or Trea Turner or Nick Castellanos, that the opponent is vulnerable. It does something that a walk doesn't.

Moreover, lineup dynamics are trickier and more nuanced than superficial statistics. Pitchers have to pick and choose who they go after, and who they pitch conservatively. This is often dependent on the matchup, but it's also dependent on the batting order. You can't pitch everyone carefully. Thomson got a really good look in late 2022 at how baseball's best pitchers approached the Philly lineup with Schwarber atop it. For the most part, they struggled immensely.

So judging Schwarber in the leadoff spot is not just about how Schwarber himself has performed. It's about what the entire lineup has done. And somehow, this lineup, on the team that has been the second best in all of baseball for the last three months, has still underperformed. That should be a scary thought to opponents. And it's why the road to glory this October and November will run straight through Citizens Bank Park.